Thinx sold its period underwear as a feminist cause — now its customers are questioning both

Lexie Abbott, a college student from Bethesda, Md., got several pairs of period underwear from the start-up Thinx for Christmas. Abbott really liked the absorbent, reusable product, and was eyeing another pair for her birthday next month.

“I had in my head they were a really good company doing things for disadvantaged women in other countries and being good to their employees,” Abbott said. According to the allegations, “that just wasn’t true.”

Thinx customers interviewed by MarketWatch said they were drawn to New York City-based Thinx for a variety of reasons: its innovative product, which they said was easier, more comfortable, environmentally-friendly and even more cost-effective than traditional pads and tampons.

They liked the company’s bold, playful marketing campaigns, including one that plastered the New York City subway with images of grapefruits and of women in their signature underwear, and its support of sanitary products for girls in developing countries.

And they appreciated Agrawal, Thinx’s founder, a high-profile female executive who talked loudly and openly about feminism and breaking the taboo around periods.

But the allegations swirling around Thinx over the last weeks have left many customers feeling disillusioned about the company, which marketed itself on feminist ideas and then, as the Racked article contends, didn’t deliver to its employees, with many blaming Agrawal herself for a hostile work environment, low salaries and a dearth of women’s health benefits. (One employee told Racked, “I can’t even afford birth control.”) Especially troubling, they said, were the sexual harassment allegations.

Is feminism only for people who can afford to buy it?
Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, vice president at the Brennan Center for Justice

A Thinx spokesperson told MarketWatch that the company is “taking action to make meaningful improvements.” Agrawal is no longer CEO, and the company will be hiring a human resources executive and is hiring an HR professional to serve in the interim, the spokesperson said.

As for the sexual harassment allegations, Thinx said it hasn’t been served with a legal complaint, an internal investigation “concluded the allegations had no legal merit,” and that it could not comment further on legal matters.

Thinx is only one of several companies making period underwear. Competitors include Vancouver, Canada-based LunaPads, which has been making its underwear products since 2000, Dear Kate and EVA Wear. And, of course, women also have traditional options, including pads and tampons, and products such as the Diva Cup, a menstrual cup that has been around since the early 2000s.

But Thinx seems to have become more widely known because of its prominent marketing campaigns, which also convinced many consumers it was a company they should support.

“Although they didn’t create period pants, their marketing was very, very aggressive, and really did smash through and bring this product into mainstream media, which wasn’t really done before,” said Tamsin Hopkins, a 29-year-old in Suffolk, England who blogs about living a green lifestyle. “I think the hype sucked me in more than anything. I wanted to be a part of a company that was doing such a great thing, smashing menstrual taboos.”

Various one-time Thinx customers told MarketWatch that they’d only buy again if the company pursued remedies, including overhauling its corporate culture and policies, bringing in new employees, hiring human resources personnel, issuing a real apology and even ousting Agrawal entirely. (Agrawal initially said she would remain the company’s “SHE-eo,” though it’s unclear what that means and if that remains the case.)

Some said that because of the good work Thinx was doing, critics were reluctant to speak their grievances. The blog “Put a Cup in it” alleged that the company changed its referral program last year, making in some cases thousands of referral dollars earned by bloggers who had promoted the company defunct. Thinx continued to promote the referral program even after it had effectively ended, according to the post.

After interviewing bloggers about this experience, “we weren’t even sure if this should be shared,” wrote Amanda Hearn, a co-founder of “Put a Cup in it.”

Still, “at the end of the day this is a community that I — we — care very much about and we feel that consumers have the right to know the ethics of the companies that they choose to support, especially when the company is so good at painting themselves in a good light,” Hearn said.

Others said the company had long avoided criticism specifically because it was a feminist-minded company run by a female entrepreneur.

Holly Grigg-Spall, a writer and women’s health activist who has been on a panel with Agrawal, said she and others had suspicions that things with Agrawal and the company were not as they seemed, but “it was almost a ‘taboo’ to speak out against a company that we, as feminists in the menstruation space, were supposed to be grateful for in terms of impact, media coverage, etc.”

“Because Thinx supposedly promotes feminist messaging, they are being given a pass by some in a way we did not see with Uber, despite some similarities in terms of the CEO’s character and treatment of workers,” Grigg-Spall said.

But others said they thought the backlash to Thinx was unfair, especially in light of the other companies who have had damaging reports about their workplace culture. One former Amazon employee told the New York Times in 2015 that “nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk.”

More recently, allegations of rampant sexism at Uber followed by an embarrassing encounter between Chief Executive Travis Kalanick and an Uber driver spurred promises from management that the company would change.

Hanna Utkin, a 22-year-old student from Brooklyn, said she was initially let down by the revelations about Thinx in the Racked report.

But added, “I don’t think it really changes the fact that the company is trying to make it possible for women to talk about periods without it being taboo,” Utkin said. “That’s the most important contribution they’ve made. I don’t think [the reports] invalidate it.”

Utkin owns two pairs of Thinx and plans to buy another. She’s considered buying other, rival period underwear, but prefers Thinx. “It’s such a juicy story, trying to bring down a female company... it’s the kind of thing people like to see fall down,” said Utkin. “To have a company like Thinx go away because of a scandal is so stupid and so wasteful and so disappointing to me.”

Customers who are upset about Thinx’s false feminism may have confused the company’s capitalism for activism, said Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, vice president at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit based at New York University School of Law.

“I can understand the disappointment of thinking you were doing business with a company that professed feminist ideals, but by definition it doesn’t exist: you can’t buy a social belief,” she said.

For example, she said, Thinx’s products — priced between $24 and $39 — are likely only affordable to a middle-class consumer, because of the up-front cost of enough product for a several day-long period.

“Is feminism only for people who can afford to buy it?” she asked. “Products are part of the solution, and I think we all have the same social goal in mind. But companies have a bottom line in mind, and I don’t think we can forget about it.”

Emma
Court

Emma Court covers healthcare for MarketWatch from New York. You can follow her on Twitter @EmmaRCourt.

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